marinuso
18d ago
Everyone wants to stay in power. This includes even democracies. The more dissent against the system there is, the more repressive said system will need to be. Communism just doesn't work very well, causing more dissent and thus needing more repression.
China is a good example. Maoism was totalitarian. Today's China is much less repressive, not because the Communist Party has embraced individual rights in any way, but because they simply don't need it as much.
Since they let go of the strict communism, they went from being as poor as Zimbabwe to being the closest thing the US has to a peer competitor. As a result, people don't generally feel like they'd be better off by overthrowing the system. And ambitious people can throw themselves into making money, rather than the only outlet for ambition being scheming either within or against the Party. There is less need for repression, and therefore there is less repression.
Capitalist-ish dictatorships generally have better economies and more outlets for personal ambition than do traditional communist dictatorships, therefore the latter are going to need more repression just to keep going.
This exact scenario is the case in most of Europe. If a car runs a red light, the owner is fined. It doesn't matter who was driving. It is the same for speeding. The reason for the law is exactly as you said. It would be hard for an automated camera to find the driver (maybe less so now than 20 years ago though), but it can just read the license plate and check the registration.
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